A series of articles and letters in some of the major sailing publications has led me to believe in the term “boat units”. Boat units are the basic budgetary measures that govern boat maintenance and upgrading. The size of the boat unit is entirely dependent on the size of the boat, the complexity of the job and the time available. It is that last one, time, that really sets the tone for a haulout.
The entire haulout process, from the decision to haul to the relaunch and cleanup, takes about five months. There may be the quick, bottom-scrubbing haul or the use of a tidal grid for a fast repair, but these are infrequent. The deliberately planned haulout is the usual occurrence.
First is the feeling of drag. The wake no longer has that flat, burbling look. The tacking takes just that little longer to execute. When the sunlight is right, there is the sight of grass on the rudder and the bit of bottom that you can see. The seed of the haulout has been planted.
Second, the depth sounder goes out. Or the knotmeter. Or the stuffing box and gland are allowing just a drip or two. Or a saltwater pump at the sink needs to be added for cruising. Whatever, the seed is sprouting.
Third, the season is right. It is either early Fall or mid Spring. The summer season is over and the weather is still good enough to work in the boatyard. Or the winter is truly past and you are itchy to get on the boat and get some things done before the cruising season arrives. Either way, you have made the decision to haulout and now must plan the dates and the activities.
This is the truly trickiest part of the entire haulout. Too fast and the rushing will prevent you from doing a quality job. Too slow and you will miss the start of the season and wear yourself out on little projects that could better be done in the evenings, while the boat is afloat. No, what you want is a workable time frame. Something that will allow the yard crew time to get their portion of jobs done and you to get yours.
Optimism is so humbling in hindsight.
The list of work has been percolating through your mind for two or three months. Some of the tasks are much older than that, things that you have wanted to do to the boat since you first set foot on her. The paint job is spiderwebbed, the standing rigging has four different fittings at deck level, the forehatch has a very slow leak, the foredeck light fixture refuses to work, the DC panel is a maze of different colored wires, and so on.
The list of work wanted, the time frame for each task and the available hours of the day are all carefully thought out, puzzled with, tinkered on until you have a model of efficiency and harmony. Then you actually maneuver into the slings and are lifted into the real world.
Somewhere, the sun shines brightly on clouds of sails decorating a blue sea. Somewhere, young children are laughing at the feel of the spray from under the bow of their first solo dinghy sail. Somewhere, a bottle of wine is being uncorked in a secluded anchorage. Somewhere, but not on your boat.
No, somewhere far, far away those pleasant things are happening. Where you are, all is blue antifouling dust. Where you are, there are large holes in your fiberglass hull, waiting for those new seacocks that did not come in with the last order. Where you are, the new stainless steel rigging, beautiful loops of shiny wire, are getting dusty in the forepeak, because the mast is down in the paint shed. Where you are, the electrician has appendicitis. Where you are, things are as far from your optimistic plan as they can possibly be. You even thought that you had allowed for float days in the plan for just these little things, didn’t you?
No, the reality is that you were thinking in a logical, linear way. Not in boat units.
Some very large, very beautiful yachts are kept that way by Microsof levels of money. That glossy, mirror finish topcoat did not get that way with a roller paint job. No, that big boat took a great many boat units.
With my twenty foot long boat, I have found that a boat unit for me is pretty much $100 or three days. This means that for any one task on the list, be it a new depthsounder or new flathead square drive bronze screws for a trim job, it will cost some combination of $100 dollars or three days.
$100 for bronze screws? No, not really. But how about four dollars and two days before I can get to a West Marine and then get them installed. After waiting till the electrician has finished running the new wiring harness for the depthsounder, of course, a little matter of an extra day.
Scraping the old, cracked varnish from the teak onboard? Three boat units, the majority of which are time-based, but also the sandpaper, the heat gun, the scrapers and the teak cleaner. New paint job for the mast? Ten boat units. Taking all of the old fittings and pieces off, drilling and tapping for new fittings and pieces, sandblasting the anodized finish off so the two part paint job will hold, sanding the mast after the sandblasting to get a smooth finish, filling with aluminum epoxy all of the old holes for pieces and fittings that will not be going back on, running new wiring through the mast for the new lights and fittings, replacing the old lights and fittings, two separate boat units at West Marine, actually primering and painting the mast and then installing all of the new and all of the saved old fittings and pieces, installing the new standing rigging and then restepping the mast.
Then there is the not so little matter of little costs. A two week planned haulout becomes four weeks. No lay days, because you are working on the boat every day and weekends do not count on the bill. Every day for a month, how many visits to the local beanery? How many return trips to West Marine How many trips to the local hardware store for parts that they might have, trying to avoid another cross-town trip to West Marine? How many West Marine trips because the hardware store ploy did not work? How much gas to commute from your seemingly part-time job to your full time boat job?
The electronic beeping of the lift has stopped. The boat is once again a creature of the sea, no longer an awkward, metal-legged land animal. The waters are outside the new seacocks, the depthsounder is not leaking, the knotmeter is idling slowing in the tidal flow. The new mast gleams like a bolt of white light and the newly varnished teak has its own glow. The boat tugs gently at the mooring lines, seemingly anxious to be off, away from this boatyard of indignities and dust.
You look at the results of weeks of labor, yours and the yard. Has it been worth it? Will you ever recover from the shock of the boat unit total?
Sure you will. Glad to spend them on something real, something that pulls on you like the tides.
Hunter Davis, Puffin